"Oh," he said, "I can look after myself," but meeting her eyes he had the impression that he hadn't really understood. He said, "Where will he have it? They'll search him at the port anyway."
"I don't know. He took nothing."
"A stick?"
"No," she said, "nothing. He just put on his jacket -- he didn't even take a hat. I suppose it's in his pocket."
He said, "I'll have to go to the station."
"Why can't you leave it to the police now?"
"By the time I get the right man and explain to him, the train will have gone. If I miss him at the station, then I'll ring the police." A doubt occurred. "If he told you that, of course he won't be there."
"He didn't tell me. I didn't believe what he told me. That was the original plan. It's his only hope of getting out of here."
When he hesitated she said, "Why not just let them meet the train at the other end? Why do it all yourself?"
"He might get out on the way."
"You mustn't go like this. He's armed. I let him have his gun."
He suddenly laughed. "By God," he said, "you have made a mess of things, haven't you?"
"I wanted him to have a chance."
"You can't do much with a gun in the middle of England except kill a few poor devils." She looked so small and beaten that he couldn't preserve any anger.
She said, "There's only one bullet in it. He wouldn't waste that."
"Just stay here," Rowe said.
She nodded. "Good-bye."
"I'll be back quite soon." She didn't answer, and he tried another phrase. "Life will begin all over again then." She smiled unconvincingly, as though it were he who needed comfort and reassurance, not she.
"He won't kill me."
"I'm not afraid of that."
"What are you afraid of then?"
She looked up at him with a kind of middle-aged tenderness, as though they'd grown through love into its later stage. She said, "I'm afraid he'll talk."
He mocked at her from the door. "Oh, he won't talk me round," but all the way downstairs he was thinking again, I didn't understand her.
The searchlights were poking up over the park; patches of light floated like clouds along the surface of the sky. It made the sky seem very small; you could probe its limit with light. There was a smell of cooking all along the pavement from houses where people were having an early supper to be in time for the raid. A warden was lighting a hurricane-lamp outside a shelter. He said to Rowe, "Yellow's up." The match kept going out -- he wasn't used to lighting lamps; he looked a bit on edge: too many lonely vigils on deserted pavements; he wanted to talk. But Rowe was in a hurry: he couldn't wait.
On the other side of the bridge there was a taxi-rank with one cab left. "Where do you want to go?" the driver asked and considered, looking up at the sky, the pillows of light between the few stars, one pale just visible balloon. "Oh, well," he said, "I'll take a chance. It won't be worse there than here."
"Perhaps there won't be a raid."
"Yellow's up," the driver said, and the old engine creaked into life.
They went up across Sloane Square and Knightsbridge and into the Park and on along the Bayswater Road. A few people were hurrying home; buses slid quickly past the Request stops; Yellow was up; the saloon bars were crowded. People called to the taxi from the pavement, and when a red light held it up an elderly gentleman in a bowler hat opened the door quickly and began to get in. "Oh," he said, "I beg your pardon. Thought it was empty. Are you going towards Paddington?"
"Get in," Rowe said.
"Catching the 7.20," the stranger said breathlessly. "Bit of luck for me this. We'll just do it."
"I'm catching it too," Rowe said.
"Yellow's up."
"So I've heard."
They creaked forward through the thickening darkness. "Any land-mines your way last night?" the old gentleman asked.
"No, no. I don't think so."
"Three near us. About time for the Red I should think."
"I suppose so."
"Yellow's been up for a quarter of an hour," the elderly gentleman said, looking at his watch as though he were timing an express train between stations. "Ah, that sounded like a gun. Over the estuary, I should say."
"I didn't hear it."
"I should give them another ten minutes at most," the old gentleman said, holding his watch in his hand, as the taxi turned into Praed Street. They swung down the covered way and came to rest. Through the blacked-out station the season-ticket holders were making a quick get-away from the nightly death; they dived in earnest silence towards the suburban trains, carrying little attaché-cases, and the porters stood and watched them go with an air of sceptical superiority. They felt the pride of being a legitimate objective: the pride of people who stayed.
The long train stood darkly along number one platform: the bookstalls closed, the blinds drawn in most of the compartments. It was a novel sight to Rowe and yet an old sight. He had only to see it once like the sight of a bombed street, for it to take up its place imperceptibly among his memories. This was already life as he'd known it.
It was impossible to see who was in the train from the platform; every compartment held its secrets close. Even if the blinds had not been lowered, the blued globes cast too little light to show who sat below them. He felt sure that Hilfe would travel first class; as a refugee he lived on borrowed money, and as the friend and confidant of Lady Dunwoody he was certain to travel in style.
He made his way down the first-class compartments along the corridor. They were not very full; only the more daring season-ticket holders remained in London as late as this. He put his head in at every door and met at once the disquieting return stare of the blue ghosts.
It was a long train, and the porters were already shutting doors higher up before he reached the last first-class coach. He was so accustomed to failure that it took him by surprise, sliding back the door to come on Hilfe.
He wasn't alone. An old lady sat opposite him, and she had made Hilfe's hand into a cat's cradle for winding wool. He was handcuffed in the heavy oiled raw material for seamen's boots. His right hand stuck stiffly out, the wrist bandaged and roughly splinted, and round and round ever so gently the old lady industriously wound her wool. It was ludicrous and it was sad; Rowe could see the weighted pocket where the revolver lay, and the look that Hilfe turned on him was not reckless nor amused nor dangerous: it was humiliated. He had always had a way with old ladies.
Rowe said, "You wouldn't want to talk here."
"She's deaf," Hilfe said, "stone deaf."
"Good evening," the old lady said, "I hear there's a Yellow up."
"Yes," Rowe said.
"She's deaf," Hilfe said, "stone deaf."
"Shocking," the old lady said and wound her wool.
"I want the negative," Rowe said.
"Anna should have kept you longer. I told her to give me enough start. After all," he added with gloomy disappointment, "it would have been better for both. . ."